It's Summer. How do Your Tactics Change?

Fishing Warm water Forum
1

Now that it’s summer and the water in the midwest has warmed into the 80s how do your tactics change from the spring spawn for panfish?

Greg

2

Slow movement along any breakline I can find. with unweighted flies.
Also try a few casts to the middle of the pond.

Rick

3

I agree with Rick. I’m still finding some bluegills shallow doing their spawning thing…but as soon as they finish up (a few days ago I spotted fry from the initial spawning several weeks back), the decent-sized bluegills will vacate the shallows. They will tour the drop-offs, and even suspend around deeper structure, or out over deeper water. You will find small and medium-sized bluegills near the surface especially on calm evenings, where they can provide a lot of fun on surface flies & poppers.

I’ve read that the jumbo bluegills will be near the deepest water (with sufficient oxygen) in summertime. That can be somewhat of a challenge to fish with the floating line I use. Perhaps intermediate or sinking lines would be a good choice in deeper waters.
And like Rick said…SLOW is key.

4

I still find them shallow, but it’s more a late evening/early morning sort of affair. The rest of the day they seem to like the deep side of breaks, or places with overhanging shade.

5

Wee dark and purple hours of the morning on until it gets bright enough that the fish stop. Then pick back up at the gloaming and into the night as long as I can stand it.

Bass come out to hunt at night bluegills feed more readily in the less lit up periods when its safer.

6

I love that word, “gloaming”. I think it should be part of every fisherman’s lexicon.

7

Absolutely.

Sunfish will be active mainly in the morning and evenings, in 4-10’ of water near structure and overhanging vegetation. They may remain active throughout the day in deep shade. In some areas, they will move to deeper water during the heat of the day, and suspend along the thermocline in 15-20’ of water, near structure.

This is the worst time of the year for crappie. They are moody, and will be suspending, many times in open water, without regard to structure. They will not move up or down, or more than a foot or two to strike. They will mostly be along the thermocline in 15’-40’ of water. This makes fly fishing for them (and regular fishing as well) very difficult at this time of year.

8

I’ll use my same patterns but maybe slightly larger than in Spring & retrieve faster. Same with bass.
Mike